"I used to know it well in my boyhood," replied that gentleman, who, truth to tell, had been waiting to be referred to. "Miss Tollemache is right; you will find its history in the Domesday Book. The manor was held by the secular canons of St. Wereburgh till the Conqueror gave it to Hugh Lupus, who granted it to the Benedictine monks." "And was it an abbey church?" asked Miss Branksome, who may or may not have divined Sir Roland's special knowledge of church history. "Certainly," he replied; "all the authorities are distinct on the point. The manor was held under the abbots by a family of the same name, so it must have belonged to the original Saxon stock." "And why did they not keep it?" asked Lady Roxburgh. "Really, this is most interesting." "A lady in the case," answered Sir Roland. "Alice de Sotowiche conveyed it away by her marriage with Robert de Maurepas. What the Normans did not get by the sword they seem to have acquired by matrimony. It did not go out of the family, though, till the time of Edward the First. These De Maurepases battled for their manorial rights, too, which included fishing in the Welland, always providing that sturgeon went to the overlord." "I always knew it was a dear old place," said Lady Roxburgh, "but now it seems doubly interesting. I must get up this history business for future use, and Miss Branksome shall give a little lecture about it next time we have a picnic." "Thanks awfully, my dear Lady Roxburgh," said that young lady, "but I never could learn anything by heart in my life. I don't mind writing it down, though, from Sir Roland's notes, so that you can have it printed for private circulation at breakfast-time on picnic days." "I think we might manage a county historical society," continued her ladyship. "It would be a grand idea for house-parties--only now it must be lunch-time. I see they have been unpacking. We must verify these quatrefoils, chevrons, and things afterwards." They lunched under the mouldering walls, picturing a long-past day when, issuing forth from the courtyard of the neighbouring castle, had ridden knight and squire and lady fayre, attended by falconers and woodsmen, with hawk on wrist and hound in leash. "What glorious times they must have had of it!" said Miss Tollemache. "I should like to have lived then. Life was more direct and sincere than in these artificial days." "If we could only have seen the people as they really were," he replied, "'in their habit as they lived,' mental or otherwise, it would be such splendid opera business, would it not? But they must have been awfully dull between times. Hardly any books, no cigars till later on; war and the chase their only recreations." "Noble occupations both," said Miss Tollemache, with an air of conviction; "they left little room for the frivolous indolence of these latter days."